Mind Over Matter - 2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

All boys fool around when they hit puberty. Sneaking their big brother’s magazines from under the mattress and giggling their asses off at the dirty pictures, watching each other in the shower and jerking off together during sleepovers. It was normal to wake up with a raging hard-on and tease one another unmercifully as we raced for the bathroom and relief. By the time I was fifteen, however, I knew I wasn’t like my friends. I didn’t want to look at the nude pictures of girls anymore… just my friends’ reactions to them. I wasn’t interested in getting a girlfriend, like all my buddies wanted, just for the opportunity to make out with them. The idea repulsed me. I did, however, want to sneak a quick peek at them after basketball practice while they were in the showers. I’d wait until the guy next to me had his eyes squeezed shut under the spray and then stare at what he had between his legs. I’d always been careful about it, though, and no one had noticed.

That was, until my best friend’s cousin came to stay with him one summer.

The kid’s name was Curtis and he was a loud mouth. He was also something of a computer geek and while I and my friend Devin were out in the back yard shooting hoops one day, he got on my computer and started poking around. I never knew why Devin always brought him along whenever he came over. I think his mom guilted him into it, to tell the truth.

Anyway, after we’d finished our game (Devin won, as usual) and came back into the house to get a drink, Curtis wandered into the kitchen with a smug look on his face. He was only a year or so younger than us, but he always had an air of superiority about him, like he was at least ten years older. He walked over and leaned against the counter next to Devin, smirked at me and asked “Dev, does Uncle Ty know your best friend is a faggot?”

I could feel the blood draining from my face. I looked at Devin and then back at his cousin. “What the fuck did you just call me?” My response was too late, though. I could see the wheels turning behind Devin’s dark chocolate eyes.

“I called you a faggot,” Curtis continued in that self-satisfied tone. “That’s what they call guys who look at pictures of naked men, isn’t it? Faggot? Homo? Queer?”

I launched myself across the room, ready to rip the little bastard’s head off, but Devin stopped me. No, that was an understatement. He actually hauled off and cold-cocked me one. Right in the face. I reeled back from the blow and stared at him in astonishment through the one eye that wasn’t rapidly swelling shut. “What the fuck, Dev?” I demanded, angrily blinking back tears. “You heard what he called me.”

“Yeah, I did,” Devin said quietly. His face had a weird look on it. Without taking his eyes off me, he said to Curtis, “How do you know this, Curt?”

“I went into his registry,” the little shit declared triumphantly. “He’d erased the history, but it was still there… all the website addresses he’s gone to.”

Devin still stared at me. “Gay porn?” he asked shortly.

Curtis nodded. “Tons of it,” he smirked.

“You lying little…” I began, but didn’t get the chance to finish. Devin grabbed Curtis by the arm and hauled him to the front door. “Devin, wait!” I called after them, trying to keep up with no depth perception left.

“You stay the fuck away from me and my family, fag!” Devin screamed over his shoulder. “If you ever come near us again, you’ll wish you were dead.”

That was the last time I saw Devin anywhere near my house. Sure, I still saw him on the way to school – I had to walk past his house, after all – but he never again came onto my block.

My mother and father were astounded. Devin and I had been friends since preschool. We were always at his house or mine together. Devin’s mother once joked that it must have been my mother that went through the pain of having twins because she couldn’t remember having to do it. Not that we looked alike, mind you. I had blond hair and green eyes, weighed 140 and was about 5’ 8” – he had dark brown hair and eyes, stood about 5’ 6” and must have been about 145, all muscle. We were as close as twins, though, and Devin’s birthday and mine were only a few days apart. Then there was the fact that we were practically inseparable. Put all that together and you can see where they were coming from.

My parents wanted to know what had happened. They’d been out at the club all afternoon and came home to find the house quiet and me sobbing in my bedroom with a black eye. I was terrified of telling them but then I remembered all the stories I’d read about other guys coming out. It’d be rough at first, but my parents loved me and things would turn out okay. Besides, I never was a very good liar.

So I told them everything. How Devin and Curtis had come over and Devin wanted to shoot some hoops but Curtis begged off and stayed in the house. How Curtis came downstairs and told Devin what he’d found on my computer. How Devin had stood by while his cousin called me names and then hit me when I tried to stop him – everything. Throughout it all, I kept expecting them to put their arms around me and tell me it was alright – that things had a way of working themselves out – and that they still loved me, whether I was gay or not.

It didn’t happen.

I’d almost reached the end of my recitation, tears pouring down my face, when I became aware of stillness in the room. I chanced a glance at my mother, but she was staring over my head at my father. When I turned to look at him, I immediately wished I hadn’t. His face was bright red and he was staring at the bookshelf across the room, the muscles in his lower jaw working furiously. I’d only seen him that angry once, and that was when one of the guys at his work backed into his truck while showing off his new car in the parking lot to one of the secretaries. It wasn’t as though the truck was anything special, but the guy was being careless. My dad’s the owner of a construction company that builds high-rise office buildings. That type of carelessness could get someone killed. The guy was out of work by the time he came in from his ‘lunch break’.

I felt a little relieved to see my father that angry, in a way. I thought he would go over to Devin’s house and tear into his dad about his son’s bigoted attitude. I was even picturing the look on Tyrone Meriden’s face when he opened the door to my father’s fury. Instead, my father got up without saying a word, reached out his hand for my mother and together they left the room. My mother, normally a very vocal woman, didn’t even so much as look at me when she closed the door.